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ew York has seen a number of war-related plays over the past year, such as Pugilist Specialist and Guantánamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom. Knock on Wood falls into the broad category of
"war theatre" but does so with a quieter approach and a more personal story.
Samuel Calderon wrote and performs Knock on Wood, which he has done in Israeli for over 1000 performances and now premieres in the
United States. Calderon tells how, in 1973, he was a 22-year old actor playing a solider named Jonathan in a production of A.B. Joshua's Final Treatment. At the climactic moment of each
performance, Jonathan is supposed to let loose a scream of lamentation, which the young Calderon was more than willing to do, except that he did not know why his character was doing such a thing
. When he asked the playwright, Joshua told him that Jonathan's scream signified the anguish of a generation over the brutalities of its
existence. He took in the information but still felt something was missing both in himself and his performance, some essential component about the life of a fighting soldier that he could not
summon into being simply by acting techniques.
He soon had his chance to remedy the lack. That same year saw the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, when Egypt and Syria launched an
attack on Israel. Calderon was called up for duty and, mistakenly or not, was assigned to a combat unit. (His training, as he keeps telling
his handlers, was in "intelligence," not "combat intelligence.") He is totally unprepared for this role, a most unsoldierly soldier. For
instance, when asked what weapon he wants, he refuses to take the larger rifle and instead takes an Uzi because it has a wooden gunstock that he can rap with his knuckles for good luck if he gets
caught in a jam (thus the title, "knock on wood"). Because of an equipment accident, he cuts his toe, which he bandages successfully,
but because of the dressing he can't fit his foot back into his boot. Luckily, when he left home, his mother had packed a pair of civilian
shoes in his duffel bag, and he slipped one of them on his foot, proceeding to go through the war with, literally, one foot in his former world and one foot in the world of war.
Finally, his unit is deployed, and he runs into his Virgil, an enlisted soldier who, by happenstance, also bears the name "Jonathan."
When Calderon tells him that he plays a Jonathan in Final Treatment, they become fast friends, with the more experienced Jonathan covering Calderon's back and guiding him through the hellishness of
combat.
Though Calderon doesn't mention it, one cannot help but hear in his story echoes of other hapless faux-warriors, such as the "good soldier" Schweik, Galy Gay in Brecht's A Man's A Man, even
Yossarian in Catch-22. What the young actor missed in his preparation for his "stage Jonathan" he gets too much of on the sands of Sinai until his soul and innocence are scorched.
And this is just what happens to Calderon. Just as the war is winding down and victory assured, Jonathan is wounded, and he loses his
eyesight. Calderon, left intact, is so shocked by the brutal and senseless suffering of his friend -- and beyond that, the unasked for
suffering of his fellow soldiers and his country -- that he closes down his soul and refuses to remember anything. He does return to Final Treatment, but the inside information he now has makes it close to
impossible for him to perform; in fact, during his first performance after returning to the theatre, he goes through his lines mechanically and, when it comes to the scream, nothing comes out of his mouth
except a low groan. He no longer has any distance between himself and his character.
And he abandons Jonathan. For a while he keeps checking in at the hospital about Jonathan's condition -- never in person, always by
phone. But then that tails off, and for 20 years he says nothing to any one about his war experiences or about Jonathan. As he says, "Curtain closed -- I closed myself."
By the mid-90s he's a successful business man -- running here and there, two cell phones going, and so on -- but the emptiness still lives
inside him, and he decides to take some courses, one of which is about using art as therapy. One of the first exercises he had to do was to partner with someone in the class and act as a guide for that
partner who, in turn, pretended to be blind. This activity, which immediately brings to mind the deserted Jonathan, and a chance meeting with someone in the class connected to A.B. Joshua (which
then meant a connection to Final Treatment), triggers the restoration of his memory and, through art, the restoration of his soul. As
Calderon puts it, "I didn't want to be in the war anymore." He finally visits Jonathan and re-establishes that friendship and, with the Joshua's permission, re-stages Final Treatment, which Jonathan
attends.
The performance runs about an hour and a half and consists of Calderon dressed in black sitting in a black chair, a glass of water on
a small table next to him, in the rather scruffy confines of the 13th Street Theatre, and talking to the audience. The performance is simply staged, Calderon's delivery is competent, and by the end of
the evening the audience has been told a simple affecting story about the journey of one man through hell and back. As Calderon said in a
recent interview, "The show is about friendship [and the] irrationality of war, which exposes us to the blindness of fate, in the face of which
we have nothing to do but knock on wood." With this addendum: Seeing theatre like this is also a way of knocking on wood.
Written and Performed by Samuel Calderon
Directed by Ruth Dytches
Performances are Tuesdays through Saturdays at 7 PM at the 13th Street Repertory Company Theatre, 50 W. 13th Street, NYC. May 17
to June 11, 2005. For tickets call (212) 352-3101 or visit
www.theatermania.com
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